


Beyond Words

by SyllableFromSound



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Time Skips, sometimes ya just gotta be sad about these twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22076446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyllableFromSound/pseuds/SyllableFromSound
Summary: "Lup also doesn't ask why he mends the same holes in shirts four times in a row, when he has so many others and it would be far less of an effort to just throw the old ones out. She doesn't ask why he saves everything, just like he doesn't have to ask why she dives for change she sees on the sidewalk. Nothing needs to be said."A few snapshots of some kids out there on the road, and beyond. (Originally written for the prompt "I know it hurts--I'm sorry" on tumblr.)
Relationships: Lup & Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	Beyond Words

"I know it hurts," Lup says almost at the same moment he lets out another pained hiss. "I'm sorry." Both of his cheeks are scraped, and the disinfectant turns the constant dull burn into a sharper sting. This wouldn't be the first time he's been scratched up like this. It isn't even the first time he's gotten scratched up after being dragged around by the hair by a stall-keeper who'd caught him red-handed in a petty theft. By now, he knows it's got to feel worse before it feels better. That doesn't stop the tears from rolling down his face, mixing with the gritty dirt and the blood and the stinging stuff. 

Her touch is ginger as the feet of a butterfly on his face. This is one of the only times she ever tries to hold back. She certainly didn't do anything of the sort when she was pounding on the fists of the shopkeeper, latching onto his burly arm and not letting go even when she was lifted off the ground. Not that it mattered. 

"Sorry," she whispers with every other dab of the cloth. "Sorry."

"I know you're hungry," Taako murmurs as she feels the familiar scrape inside her belly. The hurt is low and deep, like shame. Lately, she's been turning tail on more fights than she would have liked--or, rather, Taako's been dragging her out of every potential scrap, even when she's primed to charge in screaming. It's terrible. It's humiliating, to receive parting blows to her back as they run away, and she sulks at Taako for it every time. But she knows he's right even in those moments. She couldn't very well fight when sometimes just standing up sometimes made her vision go dark.

He's sitting with his back to the fire, hunched over and turned away from her. She knows what he's doing, though, because it's the same thing he's been trying to work on for weeks. It makes her feel useless just lying there, but all the same, each one of her exhausted limbs anchors her to the ground. He's brandishing a scavenged wand that he threw together from a broken yew branch and a tiger's-eye bead that had "fallen" (been knocked) from a jeweler's stand. If he can just get the gesture right, the precise flick of his fingers, he could use transmutation magic to turn the bark in front of him to a meal for them both. She knew he could do it. She hoped. 

In the past, he's succeeded some. The food he crafts from magic fills her. That's all it has to do at this point. But that doesn't stop him from doing what he can to make it taste less like cotton in her mouth. Wild onions and berries that they'd found in sparse patches, not nearly enough to make a meal but suitable for flavoring. Grasses and herbs from the roadside. A single acorn. He tries it all. They both do whenever they're able, stirring ingredients in shoulder-to-shoulder. They dip small fingers into pots together, making faces at each other in unison when the experiment ends up tasting like shit, relishing quietly when it doesn't. 

"I know when you're cold, Taako," she says with not a little exasperation. For probably the eighteenth time that night, she's asked him whether he needs to share the blanket with her, and he's promptly denied it. 

"What part of 'Taako's good out here' didn't you get?" he grumbles. She didn't have to be so insistent. He hasn't even been shivering--he learned long ago how to stop himself from doing it. It pisses him off, sometimes, how she just assumes shit about how he's feeling all the time. It pisses him off more that she's usually right. 

"Yeah, sure." She pulls the thin wool blanket over to where he lies on the floor of the abandoned house that they've found for the night. Then she lies down and pulls it over the both of them before wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing up against him. The wool cloth is barely enough to fully wrap around one of them. The cold starts to lose its teeth, though, pulling away from his chilled skin. 

Only the warmth isn't coming from the blanket. It's too immediate. It soaks into him and settles somewhere deep inside, like it's making a home, like it's always belonged there. It's centered on his belly, where her hands rest. He looks under the blanket, and it's only because of the darkness underneath that he can see her fingers, just faintly, glowing. "Lup?" 

"Something new I'm working on," she says quietly against his back, and even turned away from her, he can hear the smile in her voice. 

"Dope," he whispers back. On the other hand, it isn't always bad, her knowing without asking what'll make him feel better. 

"Okay, I know you're tired, but listen, I finally figured it out." The slap of books on the table echoes through the floor of the library, earning him several shushes that he promptly ignores. 

"You'd better have," she groans, forehead still pressed to wood grain. "If I spend another hour staring at this equation, I'm going to meld with this chair." It feels ungrateful even saying that. The IPRE Academy's dorm is both the most permanent and the most comfortable of homes they've had in years, and even if they've taken to doctoring up the bland cafeteria food with magic, they wouldn't trade their meal plan. The least she can do is put more effort into keeping the scholarship they've earned. 

"Don't worry, I'll walk you through it, since as we're all aware by now I'm a goddamn genius. Hey, by the way, you look like death." 

"Thanks for that," she mutters. 

"You should skip class tomorrow. I'll tell the professor you were puking."

She sighs and finally lifts her head. "No, I should go, I'll just..." She trails off when she sees the cardboard Fantasy Starbucks cup that had been silently placed beside her. It smells of caramel and just the right amount of whip. She doesn't have to take the lid off to know that he got her order right.

"Koko...thanks."

"What?" he says, though she knows he heard her. "Here, let me show you how to solve this."

_I know you want it_ , is what Lup says with the look she gives him. Her brows are arched and there's a smirk on her face and that's all the prompting he needs. He pulls the furry, five-colored, gloriously hideous jacket off the store rack and adds it to the heap he carries in both his arms. It's not like they'll have much time to shop for the two months that they'll be in space. Might as well get it in now. 

Their coworkers at the IPRE will poke fun at both of them later for blowing their money on ugly crap. Let them. The only thing that matters is that the pair of them get it. Lup never asks why he needs a third pair of holographic pants. The whole point is that he doesn't need them at all, the same way she doesn't need a sequin dress she'll likely never wear--it's novelty, still, buying what they don't absolutely need. They'll surround themselves with total unnecessaries, to assure themselves that they're really and truly here, that they've made it to this place. 

Lup also doesn't ask why he mends the same holes in shirts four times in a row, when he has so many others and it would be far less of an effort to just throw the old ones out. She doesn't ask why he saves everything, just like he doesn't have to ask why she dives for change she sees on the sidewalk. Nothing needs to be said.

_I know you're out there,_ he thinks as he and Barry search yet another dripping cave. She's not here. He knows that they have to check anyway, leave no stone unturned and all that, but his gut tells him that it's yet another waste of time, that they'll hit the stone wall before long and find nothing. He would know if she were near, the same way he knows that she's not gone forever, yet. He thinks he would know right away if she were. He would cease to exist in his current form as soon as she left this world.

_I know you're out there,_ she does not so much think as feel, because complete and coherent thought has not yet returned to her in this black place. She's a planet at the time of its birth, still formless and shifting unshaped in a lightless and soundless void. She doesn't know much yet--so little she knows, so little has come back to her--but she knows that she isn't who she was. She can't be, out of context. She can't be who she's supposed to be when she's not part of a system, when she's alone. The rest of her is somewhere among the stars that she can no longer see.

These people just don't get him. This old dwarf and beefy human he's traveling with, they ask him why he's so hellbent on stealing and raiding all the corpses for goods, why he needs to sleep near the fireplace even though the Bureau's rooms are well heated. He doesn't like questions, especially when they're about himself. He can't answer them. Why should he have to answer them? He doesn't have to explain himself. He's Taako, From TV. He's got needs.

He shouldn't get mad at them. It's not like he knows them either, or cares to. It's wrong, maybe, to expect that they should anticipate his needs, or that anyone should. But he feels like someone should. Just once, he thinks, he shouldn't have to ask before someone knows what he needs.

_I know you,_ comes a voice from some dark place. _Taako, I know who you are._

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! This is pretty much exactly what I posted on tumblr last month but I've only just managed to put it up here lol. 
> 
> Please review if you enjoyed it! And feel free to check me out on my TAZ blog @adventuresloane, where I'm usually accepting writing requests. Thanks for reading this far!


End file.
